Toothbrushes, in particular of manual toothbrushes, are constructed as disposable articles. Latest after three month of use a manual toothbrush shall be replaced at least due to hygienic reasons. That means that consumer generally only expect a low pricing for manual toothbrushes. On the other hand, manual toothbrushes have to meet a lot of requirements, such as complex bristle fields in order to clean properly interdentally, the gum line as well as the back molar teeth. Further, a manual toothbrush has to be smooth to the gum and comfortable to handle. Thus, there is a continuous need for the manufacturer of manual toothbrushes to optimize production processes in order to work very cost effective. One problem of the manufacturing of manual toothbrushes is the production time. Speed reducing steps are the cooling times needed if injection molding is used and the complexity of the bristle fields. The latter requires a lot of successive steps, if anchor technology is used to fasten the bristle filaments to the brush head. In contrast, anchor-free bristling technologies further improve the complexity of the molding procedure which as a consequence increases the molding time. That means a continuous need exist to optimize automated production of toothbrushes in order to produce toothbrushes with high and standardized quality at low costs.
Nowadays, productivity as well as machine performance and machine output, in particular outside the molding steps, may be suitable approaches to reduce costs. To improve flexibility and machine performance bristle providing tools were developed using airflow systems to transport bristles or bristle tufts (WO 2011/128020). Thereby, bristle tufts are picked from storage and transported via vacuum sucking through flexible plastic tubes. However, the transport via flexible tubes is operationally not reliable enough for high output numbers. Additionally these systems also show problems with dust accumulation and distribution. Thus, it is the object of the present application to provide an improved automated bristle providing device which can be combined with airflow transport system and shows a high operational reliability.